eventually the word morphed, long after my lisp was tamed,
from buther to buthered to, lazily and with the same odd movement
that words have gone through and will go through again, bothered.
it became our family’s in-joke.

we didn’t speak much in the last years of her life
but when i visited, helped the helper, cleaned urine around the base
of the toilet bowl or scrubbed the floor that hadn’t been
scrubbed as well or certainly since my last visit
or just sat, holding her tiny raisin of a head on my chest,
she’d ask for her sister (dead fifty years)
or her husband (dead ten)
or why her daughters never came to visit her (I an only child and a boy)
or what time is it
what time is it
what time is it
what time is it every ten minutes sometimes for an entire day

but the only time I cried, sobbed even, heaved and hurt –
the only time was a single moment of lucidity which wouldn’t return again
when she said she was hungry and
could I please oh please have some bothered toast, son

MARK SUTZ writes with hunks of charcoal on large slabs of pavement. He resides on the first floor.
He regularly contributes to random bar conversations, political telephone polls, messy exchanges with his family and arguments against the death of the book on paper by reading them in public settings. Once a year on their shared birthday he recites into the night sky his memory-banked version of 'The Raven' for Edgar Allen Poe's spirit. Having quit haiku, his skill too weak for its form, he now writes novels.
For those interested in tossing stories into the contest void, he manages Fiction Contests and Other Opportunities.